Don’t Vote? Then You Can’t Complain

I’m bringing back a slogan from the General Election Campaign in 2007 that USI used. The reason I am reviving it is that on the door’s I am getting a lot of “I’m not voting for any politician” responses. This is not the way to go. One woman who said she doubted she would vote for Fine Gael and said she didnt trust politicians, said she would still vote because that was the right thing to do.

These Local and European Elections are a chance to tell the Government what you think about their actions and what they have done so far in Government. If you are happy with them vote for them, if your not don’t! But do vote!

This is your chance. There might not be a General Election until 2012, which is a good bit away and a long time for a change of Government. A change you might want!

It is highly unlikely that you and a candidate (or anyone else for that matter) will agree on 100% of issues, but you may agree with one candidate 50% of the time and another 60% of the time and that is who you should vote for, whether they be Independent, Labour, Sinn Fein, Green, Socialist, Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.

Be sure to check if your registered on Checktheregister.ie and if not you have until May 18th to get onto the supplementary register. The forms are on the website.

USI are running a campaign to get Students to vote this year. They are calling for students to vote against the Government parties because of the Governments education policy. See StudentVote.ie for more info on their campaign

Though… in an ideal world people would vote in local & European elections based on the ideology and policies of the parties and on the basis of the record of the incumbents rather than as a referendum on the government. After all, local councils and MEPs don’t have much affect on government policy, but by treating it as a referendum on the government, MEPs, etc. aren’t put under the scrutiny they should theoretically get in a democracy.

Eurocentric, While in principle I agree with you, there is an element of that in the Local Elections, for the most part though the issues im getting on the door are national issues, so hence why I took that approach. If it was local/european issues I was getting at the door I would have looked at it from another angle!

That is backwards. If you consider democracy to be legitimate, then you *must* also consider its results to be legitimate as well. Therefore, the only sensible position is the one that recognizes that those who don’t vote out of principle (those that don’t consider democracy to be just/moral/legitimate) are the only ones that can complain about the outcome. Because they never consented to be ruled by the majority, whatever outcome it produces. Those who do can’t complain; they are getting what they asked for: to be ruled by votes.